Captain's Legacy Receives Top Book Award
by Upeasterner
Summary: Dr. Candace Muir accepts a posthumous award for "The Captain's Legacy."


Thank you, Deanna. I'm sorry to be so emotional at the moment, but this plaque is not something I can accept dispassionately. I see my brother out there in the audience, trying to act nonchalant but I see tears in his eyes, too. For inasmuch as this award celebrates my mother's skill as a writer, it also honors the memory of a most extraordinary lover and father who proved the world's greatest muse. Without Daniel Gregg, neither of us would be here. And Daniel Gregg was very, very special to Jonathan, who recently retired from the US Navy as a lieutenant commander. Please -- no applause -- I've got to get through this without breaking down.

If I ramble, I apologize. For me, there can be no studied neutrality.

Thank you, too, wonderful, wonderful writers and members of the Romance Writers Guild of North America. It is my enormous pleasure to accept this award posthumously on behalf of my mother, Carolyn Muir, who truly felt her only lasting legacy would be Boston Globe archives of her daily columns on New England life. Never one to follow book sales, she would be dumbfounded and deeply touched by your recognition. I'm sorry to say, she wasn't much into Google searches, where she might have discovered an enormous fan base and deeply abiding reader affection for her tales of New England's most inimitable ghostly spirit, Captain Daniel Gregg.

Or, perhaps, my mother would be too embarrassed to embrace the alternate reality that her journals about a true and lasting love for a specter would become her greatest gift to a world hungry for stories of unconditional acceptance and companionship. And, as always, there is a literary market for romances that brook no obstacles. As a psychiatrist, I might even suggest each fan creates a type of transference love for Captain Gregg. Transference love almost always exists in relationships where one party feels unequal, such as in the famous professor-student dyad. As such, Captain Gregg becomes for readers what they individually need him to be and Carolyn Muir is really you, still searching for and believing in love even in the aftermath of your own failed marriages and other life-altering crises. This is a theme that haunts all otherworldly tales of Vampires, Werewolves, Faeries and the like. The supernatural creatures are the ones with all of the interesting traits while the woman is us as we hope we might be -- brave, unafraid, and worthy of such special love but, not especially colorful.

I would suggest, however, that in her case my mother was none of the above. Intelligent without aggression but nonetheless feisty and opinionated, she was a fully realized human being in her own right. The very first night they met, when he famously commanded her to "Light the blasted candle," she did so but held her own ground, probably out of sheer stuborness. My mother gave as good as she got from the mighty and sometimes fearsome Captain. Most of us, including me, probably would have fled the house. She chose to stay and not just because his cornflower blue eyes and smooth-talk could charm just about anyone allowed to see him. Ladies -- and gentlemen -- do not discount how frightening the Captain could be on occasion. Wimps did not get to be sea captains in 1850. Those of you who've watched the new TV show on the dangers of catching crabs in the cold Alaskan waters have seen for yourself the majestic but horrific power of the roiling sea. Imagine trolling the decks of a schooner in those kinds of winds with three-story waves crashing around you. No Coast Guard to rescue you. No radar to predict storms. Just you and the sea and your own arrogance and skill to rely upon. Stir in the anger of a premature death and you're just beginning to understand what my mother faced our very first night at Gull Cottage. An angry, wounded soul. An aggrieved ghost feeling stirrings of love -- for the first time, ever.

But wait-- I think I've just described my mother, too. Abused by my father, manipulated by controlling rich parents, she arrived in Maine as haunted as he. Nowadays, kids joke about unmarried fathers being "baby daddies." Well, that's what our father was to us. He was certainly little more than that to my mother. Although she talked a good show, Jonathan and I both sensed there was something very special about the Captain that she never got from our father. My mother became incandescent when he materialized. The Captain, for his part, could not control his stern visage, either.

There was nothing unrequited -- on any front -- about their often tempestuous relationship. I would remind all of you that as romantic as Captain Gregg may seem, in her journals he is very much the embodiment of 19th-century male chauvinism. Although my mother did not dwell or encourage such, he was obliquely boastful about his conquests of 100 years ago -- and I have to say my mother had more than a little jealous streak in her disposition. Of course, he couldn't stand the ardent gazes of admiration she drew. As you know, my mother was a head-turner and Captain Gregg was just insecure enough about his spectral status to take every male presence (save Claymore's, of course) as a personal affront and challenge. They argued passionately in equal measure to their love and adoration for one another. Martha, our housekeeper, liked to joke that you could set your watch by the timing of their arguments, which punctuated every morning and afternoon. The topic didn't matter for the resolution was always the same. They loved the give-and-take of conversation that ebbed and flowed in the master Captain. As children, Jonathan and I would frequently drift off to the reassuring murmur of adult conversation and the soft, low laughter emanating from their bedroom door.

You know, Captain Gregg was only visible to us and tangible to my mother. In short, he was a real ghost but a man out of real time. Sometimes this made for a very claustrophobic situation for us all. But soulmates, as fans and reviewers like to describe them, they were. Divided pieces of the same soul, as the Greeks posited, who somehow found each other through the tremendous obstacles of time and space. We should all be so lulcky.

There was also a much different kind of love ongoing at Gull Cottage. The kind, frankly, that few of you are disposed to write about. Within days of our arrival, Captain Gregg was smitten with Jonathan and myself. The bombastic bachelor had another tender side -- children. I think he knew about our real father, and was very protective of us kids. Jonathan and I were loved and oddly cocooned by this overpowering male presence. Although he and my mother tried to present a united parental front, even Martha knew how easy it was for the two of us to dance circles around the Captain. The Captain was all bluster when it came to us. Goodness knows he helped me through many a bad teenaged relationship. When Jonathan briefly floundered after graduating high school, it was the Captain who hushed my mother's overt concern and gradually "led the lad home" all the way to the U.S. Naval Academy. He also taught us how to compromise in relationships and to navigate stormy emotional weather with nothing but trust as a compass. We learned important lessons about respect, duty, honor and love for our mother, concepts not always easy to hold onto during the tumultuous 60s and 70s.

Speaking tonight as a Harvard-trained analyst and clinician, I tell you truthfully that no matter how complicated – or convoluted as some prefer – my field may seem, all analysis, every human relationship and every human desire and need can be summed up by that quintessential tome about love, "The Runaway Bunny." No matter where you go, what you say or what you do, the mama bunny always follows, accommodating her life to yours so you can become the person you were meant to be. And Captain Gregg was surely that to my mother, as she was to him. They both forsook all other possibilities to live, so to speak, their days and nights with each other even at the risk of ridicule from families and her friends. Where one was, there was the other, living in the moment a life filled with mutual respect and joie de vivre. This, I believe, is the reason for "Captain's Legacy" has now entered its third publishing and, quite possibly, the reason I'm here.

I stand before you tonight not as an analyst, but as a daughter who loved them both deeply, who was raised in the shadow of this love. Tonight, I am touched beyond words by this tribute to the journals which chronicled my mother's love and devotion to Captain Gregg.

Some bloggers have posited my mother invented a spectral lover out of loneliness, a man who represented the full life she surrendered by choosing to isolate herself on the lonely Maine coastline. In this, they say, she created a subjective lover who fulfilled her every need, wish and desire. To these individuals, Captain Gregg becomes subjective psychological nuance with no objective physical presence. Ghosts, of course, aren't real – the subconscious is!

If this be true, then the tiny community of Schooner Bay, Jonathan, Martha and myself all fell deeply into something the French and analytical community call the folie a deux, or madness for two. A condition in which symptoms of a mental disorder, occur simultaneously in two individuals who share a close relationship or association.

This, perhaps, might be entirely possible if you didn't consider that ultimate skeptic, Martha, famous for keeping her own counsel while sharing opinions under her breath. In time, she became the Captain's biggest supporter and baker of cookies, cinnamon rolls and other ghostly delights. I believe shortly before her death in 1988, she gave an interview to a California newspaper in which she stated the only illusion at Gull Cottage was that of privacy from media. But Martha was a true believer.

Born in Maine, Martha, a true down Easterner, was not one to invite scrutiny or ridicule. Martha was never blind to my mother's faults or prone to any delusional fantasies about the Captain. Jonathan and I knew that if Martha believed, there could be no doubt.

Grandma Williams also knew, and became a frequent visitor to Gull Cottage once Grandpa passed. She was as enamored of the Captain as we, even to the point of demanding whether or not she could expect future grandchildren!

Here, however, tonight, in this room, we all are believers and incurable romantics. I don't mean to sound presumptuous, but I was advised earlier, by a member of your board, there probably is nobody present tonight who doesn't believe in or wish for the reality of Captain Gregg and the love of the ghost for Mrs. Muir.

The question I've been asked to adroitly address for this friendly audience is, did they or didn't they? Were they or weren't they? Did they requite or not? Can true love by definition be requited? How would I know? This is delicate territory even for an adult child.

I appreciate your laughter regarding this last point, but you might be surprised to learn my brother Jonathan and myself as teenagers shared your concerns and interest about the ghost and Mrs. Muir's intimate, private moments.

Most teens are disgusted by the thought their parents might "do it" or even need physical companionship. We, however, weren't normal teens. Spirits aside, we were the offspring of that rarest manifestation, the truly beautiful woman who could marry anyone she wished. New Englanders may be famously taciturn, but tongues wagged when my mother entered a restaurant or shopped. Her every move and look was scrutinized to see if they conveyed communication with an amicable spirit. Yes, my mother was a MILF (don't ask me to spell that one out) so everyone figured Captain Gregg was living up to his historical reputation as a lady's man extraordinaire. Why else, the logic went, would Carolyn Muir spurn all suitors and lock herself up with two kids, a curmudgeon housekeeper, a nauseatingly cute terrier mix and a 1950s typewriter for companionship? Her oft-repeated comment that "we writers always talk to ourselves" carried no weight in Maine. As far as our little town was concerned, "we writers" talked to Captain Gregg.

Jonathan and I had a stake in all this. We'd already lost one father and had no desire to lose a second, especially one we could remember. Early on, I know my mother was chafed by the growing realization the Captain had, without anyone openly realizing it, become like a father to us. This seminal fact I believe is what prevented a possible early consummation to their relationship. Once she, too, embraced the Captain as a lover and domestic partner, there could be no turning back. If things did not work out intimately for them, it would have been impossible for her to remain at Gull Cottage yet equally incomprehensible for her to deprive two already scarred children the presence of the only "father" they would ever remember.

Thus I believe they proceeded lightly, the Captain petrified of doing anything that might result in the flight of his soul mate and she, terrified of surrendering to emotions capable of overwhelming her fledgling sense of independence. As was always the case with her, Runaway Bunny-like love for Jonathan and myself carried the day for at least several months. This tension, I believe, was temporarily resolved by the Captain's pretense he could not be touched. This gave them both an early out. However, I vaguely remember the strange looks between them when Jonathan arrived home from school one day and announced kids on the playground were calling his mother a 'ghost-lover.' With the unerring instinct of a small child, I knew there had to be some truth to this otherwise Mom wouldn't have given the Captain that slow, considered, blinking look I knew was shorthand for love, a Morse code of the eyebrows.

Winters are dark, cold, and deeply intimate affairs in Maine with long spells of snow-enforced isolation in front of fireplaces whose flames reduce the world to an orange circle. Everything outside this circle of light ceases to exist, and so it was that Jonathan and I passed out one evening after a electricity-less night of roasted marshmallows and hot chocolate. It was too cold for us to sleep in our own rooms, and the last thing I remember before falling asleep in front of Mom's hearth was the Captain gently covering us with blankets.

Spoiler alert: If you prefer to believe that requited love ruins a good romance, now is the time for that bathroom break you've been entertaining since coffee was served 20 minutes ago. Angst sells, real-life acceptance of and surrender to inexplicable passion do not. But if you've read "Captain's Legacy," as I presume most of you have, you know that a shared bed was the beginning, not the end, of this truly magnificent love story.

That cold winter night, so very long ago, I awakened to find my mother standing directly in front of the hearth, the Captain behind her, his arms encircling her, his face nuzzled in her neck. "There can be no turning back now, Carolyn," I heard him whisper before the wind rose again in a banshee-like howl that caused my mother to snuggle further backwards into the Captain's embrace. It was impossible to hear her response with the wind buffeting our house on the cliff at 50 miles per hour. They're still talking about the storm of '68 and Jonathan and I are still basking in the warmth of our shared realization that night, that mom and the Captain really were an item and that she was, indeed, a ghost-lover.

Jonathan it turns out, was purposefully spying that night. I've since learned he pinched me awake so I could see what he did. Jonathan was a bit of a wimp in those days, and I frequently was forced to defend him on the playground. My brother desperately needed the security of the Captain's love and was even more worried than I that Mom might do something to endanger our life at Gull Cottage. After all, the Captain never told us to get out – it was always Mom deciding we needed to leave that resulted in occasional scares about our continued stay there. Jonathan still mumbles about "stupid Vanessa."

So when I shared with Jonathan the next day my recollection of the night before, he grinned broadly and shot me a spit wad. "I know, Candy, and they had a real hard time saying good night 'cause Mom said the Captain couldn't stay while we were in the room and he didn't get mad but said he was going to the Widow's Walk to cool off."

"That means she's a ghost-lover!" he chortled. After that night, things were noticeably calmer in the house. The Captain and Mom still bickered incessantly and managed to annoy each other in equal proportion. Martha stopped glaring at the Captain like he was a sexual predator and each of us began settling comfortably into the grooves made by Mom and the Captain's new partnership.

Which brings me back to the here and now, to us, and the reason it gives me such honor and pride to accept this award for both the author and subject of "The Captain's Legacy."

Tonight, we are all ghost-lovers, basking in the promise that true love exists and unconditional warmth and support are not the rare and precious commodities we consider them to be. Anyone with an open heart and a willingness to let go and risk losing it all, again, can build a legacy as lasting as the Captain's.

To answer the burning question once and for all, in objective reality, yes, they did. With love, humanity and complete dedication to us and each other. Never close your hearts to love, dear readers. You never know what follows the shipwreck. There is more to life than treacherous shoals and earthly existence. There is always love. If you can believe in ghosts, then certainly you can never rule out love. They're both invisible, after all.

Thank you – and good night!


End file.
